SOME BASIC TRUTHS ABOUT 
OUR GOVERNMENT 


Address by 

William G. Brantley 

•I 

Former Congressman from Georgia 


Before 

THE NEW JERSEY SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA 
At Its Annual Meeting In Philadelphia 


DECEMBER 18, 1919 









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f’. •t i). 

9 1920 


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SOME BASIC TRUTHS ABOUT 
OUR GOVERNMENT 

We stand tonight in the shadow of the world^s 
greatest tragedy. We have just withdrawn from 
participation in the greatest exemplification of the 
law of force that the world has ever seen. We are 
living in the aftermath of tremendous events, and 
the times appear to be out of joint. The war has 
ended but our Government continues to function 
on the legal fiction that it has not. We are oppressed 
by the high cost of living. Social unrest exists and 
discontent abounds. The rewards for the use of 
property and for services rendered are unevenly 
bestowed. The demonstration given by the war of 
the power of force has made its impression, and all 
over the land classes of our people are seeking 
through the coercion of the strike, which is but 
another name for force, to compel the granting to 
them of the rights and privileges which they demand. 
We need not be discouraged by these things for they 
are but a part of the upheaval incident to the cata¬ 
clysm of war. The smoke of the great conflict will 
lift and we shall see more clearly; the common sense 
and patriotism of the American people will in due 
time make themselves heard; justice will again per¬ 
form its functions; inequalities will be ameliorated, 
and orderly procedure re-established. 

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To the hastening of these devoutly to be wished 
for ends, we, who are here assembled, may with 
profit briefly review and again fix in our minds some 
of the basic truths upon which our Government is 
grounded, and which have guided its growth in 
beneficent power for more than a century and a 
quarter of time. It may well be that we of today 
are so far removed from the origin of our Govern¬ 
ment that we have forgotten from whence it came, 
or upon what its power rests. We may have for¬ 
gotten that for each protection it affords, a duty is 
enjoined. Others of us, perhaps, coming from 
foreign lands to share in American liberty have not 
been sufficiently told in what this liberty consists, 
nor how, only, it can be preserved. 


Our Government A Social Compact. 

Our Government is but a social compact. The 
key to it is found in the teachings of Solon, the 
great Athenian law-giver and founder of democratic 
government. When he was told that his proposed 
government would be but spider webs, and like 
them fit only to entangle the poor and weak, leaving 
the rich and powerful to easily break through, he 
replied that men keep their agreements when it is 
to their interest so to do. He said that under his 
proposed government each citizen would know 
that if he violated the law others would do likewise, 
and with the result that all protection to him of life, 
liberty and property would be gone. 


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In the preamble to the constitution of the Com¬ 
monwealth of Massachusetts it is written that: 

body politic is a social compact by 
which the whole people covenant with each 
citizen, and each citizen with the whole 
people, that all shall be governed by certain 
laws for the common good. 

In the preamble to the Constitution of the 
United States it is declared that, 

‘^We the people of the United States 
* * * do ordain and establish this con¬ 
stitution * * 

Its establishment followed the creation of the 
States, but it is not the constitution of the States, 
but of all the people of all the States. It is their 
social compact, to the keeping of which each citi¬ 
zen, for his own and the common good, is pledged. 

A constitution is not power; it is but the symbol 
of power. The power is in the people. 

We have been taught that of the three forms of 
government the principle of the monarchical is honor, 
of the despotical, fear, and of the republican, virtue. 
The strength and power of our Government rests 
and so long as it endures must rest upon the virtue 
of the American people. 

Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address 
to Congress, gave it as his opinion that our Govern¬ 
ment was the strongest upon earth, because, he said, 
it was the only government where every citizen at 
the call of the law would place himself beneath its 
banner and make every assault upon it a matter of 
personal concern to him. 


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The Right of Property. 

The three great rights of life, liberty and property 
existed for all our people before our Constitution was 
written. They are natural rights. They are inher¬ 
ent and inalienable. Our Government does not 
confer them, but was organized and exists to protect 
them, and to protect them equally for all. All law- 
abiding citizens concede that the right to live is 
inherent and inalienable and cannot be denied except 
by due process of law, and the lawless who deny it 
must be suppressed. The right of property is not 
at this time so universally conceded, as it should be, 
to be inherent and inalienable, while the right of 
liberty is erroneously construed by some, to be a 
right of greater extent than it actually is. 

The Constitution of the United States does not 
confer the right of property, but it protects it by 
providing that private property shall not be taken 
for public use without just compensation. The 
Constitution not only puts this limitation upon the 
power of the Government of the United States, but 
it goes further and denies to each State the power to 
abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of 
the United States, and denies the power to any 
State to deprive any person of his property without 
due process of law. It does not define the privileges 
and immunities of citizens which it protects, but in 
the very early history of the development of our 
present magnificent system of jurisprudence the 
courts declared that: 

^^The right of acquiring and possessing 
property and having it protected is one of 
the natural inherent, and inalienable rights 


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of men/’ and that man would become 
a member of a community in which he could 
not enjoy the fruits of his honest labor and 
industry. 

They declared that included in the privileges and 
immunities protected by the Constitution was the 
privilege of acquiring and possessing property of 
every kind, and that these privileges and immuni¬ 
ties were those which of right belong to the citizens 
of all free governments. 

History teaches us that the dawn of civilization 
began with the recognition of the right of property, 
and also teaches us that the fall of the ancient repub¬ 
lics dated from the beginning of their denial of this 
right. 

Our country has been startled more than once in 
recent years by the declaration from men in high 
places of the possibility of the right of property being 
destroyed. Every student of our Constitution knows 
that so long as the Constitution stands, it is beyond 
the power of Congress, or of any State Legislature, 
to take the private property of any citizen without 
due process of law and without just compensation. 

We should not close our eyes to the fact, however, 
that there are false teachers and prophets abroad in 
the land, who, for one reason or another, would 
destroy the right of private property, and would 
build upon its ruins a state of socialism, or commu¬ 
nism, where all property would be community prop¬ 
erty. We occasionally hear much of a supposed 
distinction between the right of property and the 
right of liberty. We hear the rights of men exalted 
as something apart from and above the rights of the 


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dollar. Those who so speak apparently lose sight 
of the fact that the very essence of liberty is the right 
to acquire, to own and to enjoy property, and that 
the right of property and the right of liberty are 
inseparably linked the one with the other. 

The privilege of pursuing an ordinary calling or 
trade is a right of liberty, but vain would be that 
right if the fruits of its exercise may not be protected. 

The specious distinction urged has already re¬ 
sulted in the writing into our statutes of the eco¬ 
nomic untruth that labor is not a commodity. All 
must agree that if by the word ^ Taboris meant 
^Taborer,^^ the statute speaks but such an obvious 
truth that its enactment was unnecessary; for no 
person, under our free government, can be a com¬ 
modity. If, on the other hand, by ^Tabor^’ is 
meant a service which is bought and sold, and which 
has a market value, it undoubtedly is a commodity. 
In our courts of justice the lawyer, the physician, 
the bricklayer, the carpenter, the miner, and all 
others who labor with hand or brain can recover upon 
a quantum meruit for services performed, for the 
value of that which has been done can be proven, 
and the right to buy and sell it will not be questioned. 
Not only so, but the labor value attaching to and 
forming a part or the value of all physical subjects 
of barter and sale is everywhere bought and sold. 

I gravely doubt if all those insisting upon the 
proposition that labor is not a commodity, realize 
that such declaration is but the first essential step 
in the establishment of communism. Any reader 
of the theory of communism knows that once the 
proposition that labor is not a commodity is clearly 


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established, it will be followed by the abolishment 
of the wage system, for obviously if labor is not a 
commodity, is not something which may be bought 
and sold, the wage system must be abolished. 
With the abolishment of the wage system the next 
step in the establishment of communism is the 
abolishment of private property, for labor must be 
compensated; those who labor must live, and if that 
which they do has no market value, and is not to be 
compensated for in wages, it must be compensated 
for by an interest in property, or in the earnings of 
property. 

We are witnesses today of the beginning of an 
organized effort in our country to establish complete 
communism in certain property for one class of our 
citizens. This effort is found in what is known as 
the Plumb Plan^’ for the reorganization of the 
railroads. This plan abolishes private property in 
railroads, makes railroads community property, and 
gives to the workers on them complete control over 
them, with the right to fix such rewards and emolu¬ 
ments for themselves as to them seem just and right. 
This plan proposes by legislative fiat, and in viola¬ 
tion of the Constitution, to take these railroads from 
their owners without providing just compensation. 
It declares railroads to be public highways, and not 
private property, in the face of the fact, known to all, 
that they were built by private capital, and that the 
Supreme Court of the United States has times with¬ 
out number declared them to be private property, 
and that their value is under the protection of the 
Constitution. 

The plan proposes to compensate the owners of 
this property, not for its value,, but by a process of 


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accounting, for such amount only as the owners, 
considered as public agents, may have actually 
invested in the property at the time of the taking. 

The plan proposes, after thus violating the Consti¬ 
tution in taking the properties, to create a special 
and favored class of our citizens, to wit: the workers 
on the railroads, and to deliver to them to do with 
as they please, these properties, in which all citizens 
have been declared to have an interest. True, the 
plan proposes to put upon the workers the obligation 
to share with the public the surplus from earnings 
remaining after their demands have been satisfied, 
but as they are to be the judges of what their demands 
shall be, no one will be misled by the obligation pro¬ 
posed to be imposed. 

The Right of Liberty. 

When we come to consider the right of liberty we 
must keep in mind that liberty is not license. We 
are not at liberty to do anything and everything that 
impulse or desire may suggest. We do not enjoy 
the liberty of the jungle, but liberty under the law. 
In the organization of our social compact, the courts 
declare, that each citizen necessarily parts with some 
rights or privileges which as an individual, not 
affected by his relations to others, he might retain. 
He agrees upon entering the compact, that the Gov¬ 
ernment may regulate his conduct towards other 
citizens, and the manner in which he may use his 
own property, whenever such regulation becomes 
necessary for the public good. 

The right to the enjoyment of life and of liberty, 
the right to acquire and possess property, and the 


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right to pursue and obtain happiness, are all alike 
subject, under our social compact, to such restraints 
as the Government may justly prescribe for the 
general good of the whole. 

Our right of private property is subject to the 
condition that we will not use it to the hurt and injury 
of the common good, or of the general welfare. We 
have restrained our Government from taking pri¬ 
vate property except by due process of law and 
upon just compensation, but subject to that restraint 
the Government may take it whenever it is to the 
common good and for the general welfare. It is 
upon the principle that the right of private property 
may be restrained for the common good that our law 
condemns monopolies, and subjects to public regu¬ 
lation the private property composing our public 
utilities. It was upon this principle that aggrega¬ 
tions of private capital, commonly known as trusts, 
have been placed upon the dissecting table and their 
power for harm removed. It is upon this principle 
that if the operation performed is not successful it 
will be repeated again and again. Is not a labor 
trust as hurtful to the common good and to general 
welfare as a money trust? If the money trust may 
be placed on the dissecting table, why not the labor 
trust? Does not the principle of our social compact 
apply equally to both? Is not an autocracy of labor 
as harmful as an autocracy of capital? There is no 
room under our Government for autocracies of any 
kind. In these suggestions no thought of slavery, of 
involuntary servitude or of peonage is involved or 
implied, for under our social compact a man can no 
more use his right of liberty to the injury and hurt of 


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his fellow men, than he can so use his right of property. 
The right of liberty may be restrained, just as the 
right of property may be restrained, when it is to 
the common good. 

Where, under our social compact, can be found the 
justification for any body of men to conspire to freeze 
all the people, in order that they may coerce those 
whom they immediately serve, to grant to them 
what they believe to be and what may be, their 
just demands? Where, under our social compact, 
can be found the justification for any body of men 
to conspire to stop the wheels of transportation, to 
suspend and destroy the commerce of the country, 
to bring suffering and death upon the masses of the 
people in order that they may receive from those 
they serve what they believe to be, and what may be, 
just rewards for their services? 

If such power to conspire is legally justified under 
our social compact, and if there is no power in our 
established government to prevent and punish it, 
the supremacy of the Government is gone, the 
equality of the law is destroyed, the equal protec¬ 
tion of the great rights of life, liberty and property 
ceases to exist, and we live in a state of anarchy, 
where to the strong all things are possible. Our 
social compact cannot endure if the Government 
created thereunder to protect all is actually less 
powerful than one class of the people whom it assumes 
to protect. 


Our System of Laws. 

Our present system of laws is the result of evolu¬ 
tionary development. We have profited by our 


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experiences. We have made new laws from time to 
time as developments required them to be made. 
We have perhaps made some which should not have 
been made, but each new law has been to meet a new 
condition. Our laws are not yet complete nor perfect. 
They may be fairly full and complete with respect 
to property rights, but in the face of past and exist¬ 
ing conditions can we say that they are full and com¬ 
plete with respect to the rights of liberty? Has not 
the time arrived to force by legislative decree, the 
consideration of the common good and the general 
welfare, in the settlement of all labor disputes? Is 
there anything in the rights of employer or employee 
which is beyond the reach of the law, or that is 
superior to the common good and the general wel¬ 
fare? Is there any reason why our courts may not 
be, if they are not now, fully equipped to adjudicate 
these disputes, and the extent of, and the limita¬ 
tions upon liberty rights, just as they adjudicate 
the extent of and the limitations upon property 
rights, and the extent and limitations of all our 
rights? 

Our boasted civilization is a myth and our Govern¬ 
ment a failure, if there, today, exists an autocracy 
of capital which can only be restrained and controlled 
by an autocracy of labor. If force must be resorted 
to by any citizen in order to lawfully enjoy any of his 
inherent and inalienable rights, our social compact 
is dead. 

The Government must be supreme, and its ap¬ 
pointed tribunals must adjudicate and determine 
all rights as between citizens, and as between the 
Government and its citizens, or there is no govern¬ 
ment. 


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The Courts. 

Fear of the courts has been expressed by some, 
while others have denounced them, and already by 
legislative decree the courts have been stripped of 
their power in certain classes of cases. If these 
things are justified, shame and humiliation must be 
the portion of us all over the failure of American ideals. 

Our social compact rests upon the mutual promises 
of our people that all will observe the law, and 
upon the confidence that our appointed agents will 
be true to their obligations. 

The immortal Washington declared: 

^^If we are afraid to trust one another, 
under qualified powers, there is an end of 
union. 

The feeling of protection we enjoy is based upon 
our confidence in the honesty and integrity of human 
agencies, and upon our undying faith in the patriot¬ 
ism of the American people. Destroy this confi¬ 
dence, uproot this faith, inspire distrust, and the 
strength of our Government is gone. 

We have many times declared ours to be a Govern¬ 
ment of law, and not of men. It is our courts that 
make it so. But for our courts we would have 
autocratic government, or anarchy. The statutes 
enacted by legislatures would be dead and meaning¬ 
less things, but for the power and duty of the courts 
to give them vitality, and compel obedience to their 
commands. Private disputes could only be settled 
by force if there were no courts to compose them. 

Power, under our form of Government, must be 
somewhere lodged, to say when a given act violates 


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the law, or else each person and each department 
of the Government must construe for himself or 
itself, and all is confusion. Power must be some¬ 
where lodged to say when a statute violates the Con¬ 
stitution, or the legislature will be supreme and 
the Constitution a vain and empty thing. Where 
better can this power be lodged than in an indepen¬ 
dent judicial system? The crowning glory of our 
Government is in its judicial system, and because 
this system is independent, and of equal rank with 
the legislative and executive departments, the greater 
is the glory of our Government. Judges are human 
and must make mistakes, but let it be said to the 
everlasting honor of the American Bench that few 
are the instances where such mistakes have been in¬ 
tentional. 

Education. 

We should be strict to see that all our public 
agents, including the judicial, truly and well employ 
their great functions. We should be quick to 
applaud those who are faithful and to condemn and 
remove those who are unworthy. But above and 
beyond this, it is the duty of all who know and 
understand the principles upon which our Govern¬ 
ment rests, to disseminate their knowledge among 
the masses. A republic can only be maintained 
through the virtue of its people, and virtue cannot 
exist where ignorance controls. The need of the 
present hour is education, not simply education in 
the limited sense—important as it is—but education 
in the broad sense of knowledge of the duties of 
government, of the rights of men, and of the privi¬ 
leges and responsibilities of citizenship. 


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In our democracy, as in all others, the highest and 
best that may reasonably be hoped for is laws 
and officials fairly representative of the average intel¬ 
ligence of all the people. It is our duty ever and ever 
to strive to raise this average. 

In our democracy, as in all others, we have legis¬ 
latures and courts and offices and officers of all kinds, 
which we call our Government, but well we know 
that in the last analysis we have no government 
other than public sentiment. It is our duty ever 
and ever to strive to make this sentiment pure and 
strong and wholesome. The stream can rise no 
higher than its source, and if we would have a gov¬ 
ernment pure and strong in its righteousness, we 
must make the body politic pure and strong in its 
righteousness. 

Thomas Jefferson believed that only through the 
education of the masses could this republic endure. 
Throughout his long life, in letters and in speeches, he 
urged the importance and the necessity of education. 
So strong was his conviction in this regard that when 
he came to prepare the epitaph for his own tomb he 
forgot that he had been Governor, and Secretary of 
State, and Minister to France, and twice President 
of the United States, but he did remember what he 
had achieved for education and its child liberty, and 
his epitaph as he prepared it reads: 

^^Here lies the body of Thomas Jefferson, 
the author of the Declaration of American 
Independence, the Virginia Statute for relig- 
ous freedom, and the father of the Univer¬ 
sity of Virginia. 


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